Law and Psychology Commons^™

An Appraisal Of Competency, Henry Davidson

Cleveland State Law Review

Competence is the ability to handle business affairs with ordinary prudence. It is a legal not a medical formula, and in a sense, it must be defined negatively. Every one is assumed to be competent. If you think some one is incompetent, you must prove it. He does not have to prove that he is competent. Therefore, the formula is a criterion of incompetency not competency. To declare a person incompetent, these findings must coexist: 1. He has a mental disorder. 2. This causes bad judgment. 3. Because of the bad judgment, the patient either: (a) Squanders his money or …

Suicide Responsibility Of Hospital And Psychiatrist, Irwin N. Perr

Cleveland State Law Review

The problem of suicide is a prominent public health problem in this country. Physicians and hospitals have an obvious concern, as do the law courts, where actions for wrongful death and negligence may involve suicide as a result of a tortious act. This paper will restrict comment to the principles and application of present law as to the responsibility of the psychiatric hospital and the psychiatrist and a discussion of some of the applicable psychiatric factors.

Commitment Of The Mentally Ill: Problems Of Law And Policy, Hugh Alan Ross

Michigan Law Review

A number of recent events makes it timely to reconsider certain aspects of the relation between psychiatry and the law. In the past decade, both the public and the legal profession have been increasingly concerned with the impact of mental illness on the law. In 1952, an outstanding text, Psychiatry and The Law, was published as the joint effort of a lawyer and a psychiatrist. Two years later the Durham case laid down a new test of insanity in criminal cases, rejecting the M'Naghten rule. Interest in the case resulted in a host of law review articles, symposiums, and …

Mental Illness And The Law Of Contracts, Robert M. Brucken S.Ed., David L. Genger S.Ed., Denis T. Rice S.Ed., Mark Shaevsky S.Ed., William R. Slye S.Ed., Robert P. Volpe S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

The traditional and most important problem relative to mental illness and the contract is the situation created when mental illness exists at the time of agreement (the problem of contractual capacity). One principal result of mental illness at this time may be the avoidance of the contract by the mentally ill person. Since case law in this area is extensive, the major portion of the study is concerned with this problem (parts II, III and IV) and the effects of such incapacity throughout the remaining course of the contract. Mental illness occurring after agreement and at the time of performance …

Torts - Mental Distress - Recovery Against Original Wrongdoer For Fear Of Cancer Caused By Subsequent Medical Advice, Paul Gerding

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff, suffering from bursitis in the right shoulder, received X-ray treatments from defendant physicians. Subsequent thereto, plaintiff's shoulder began to itch, scab, and blister for several years, a condition diagnosed as chronic radiodermatitis caused by the X-ray therapy. Approximately two years after the treatments, plaintiff was examined by a dermatologist who advised her to have her shoulder checked every six months because the area might become cancerous. Plaintiff then developed a severe "cancerphobia," an apprehension that she would ultimately develop cancer from the radiation burn. Plaintiff brought a malpractice suit against defendant physicians, seeking recovery for the physical injury and …

Psychosomatic Disease And The Law, Carl E. Wasmuth

Cleveland State Law Review

There are fundamental differences between the standard of probabilities in law upon which a jury must deliberate, andthe standard of certainty in the scientific laboratory of medicine which an investigator must respect. This conflict is nowhere more evident than in the field of psychosomatic disease. This area of medicine has long been recognized but it was only in recent years that it has become the target for intense research. This lack of medical interest in what was considered a fringe area has caused the legal profession to substitute law for medicine. Eventually, however, science will progress in the field of …

Mental Competency And Mental Hospitals, Ewing H. Crawfis

Cleveland State Law Review

Psychiatrists generally are aware that there is not necessarily any relation between competency and hospitalization for mental illness. The consensus seems to be that these two things should be considered entirely separately. Many patients may need mental hospital care, without having suffered any impairment of their competency. My personal estimate is that 75% of all patients admitted to the average mental hospital could be considered to be competent. Also, it is well to keep in mind that an individual may require a guardian because of incompetency due to a mental disorder, but not require hospitalization in a mental hospital. Unfortunately, …

Involuntary Psychiatry In Nova Scotia: The Review Board Reports (1979-1983) And Recent Proposals For Legislative Change, H Archibald Kaiser

Dalhousie Law Journal

The Nova Scotia Psychiatric Facilities Review Board, appointed under s. 53 of the Hospitals Act1, fulfils many vital functions affecting the treatment and liberty of the patient involuntarily confined in the psychiatric hospitals of the Province.2 Although its proceedings are held in camera,3 the Board fortunately publishes an Annual Report which is tabled in the House of Assembly.4 Neither lay persons aor lawyers are likely to scrutinize these documents and this Comment is intended in part to redress this regrettable disregard as well as to offer some critical remarks. They contain material which will both hearten and disturb the reader, …

Weihofen: Mental Disorder As A Criminal Defense, Winfred Overholser M.D.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Mental Disorder as a Criminal Defense. By Henry Weihofen.

Criminal Law - Reexamination Of Tests For Criminal Responsibility, Mary Lee Ryan

Michigan Law Review

Criminal law in the Anglo-American system of jurisprudence is based upon the concept that persons should be held responsible for their acts. A strong corrollary to this idea is that certain types of persons, namely the "insane," should not be held responsible for criminal conduct. Although this proposition seems beautifully simple, courts in England and the United States for over a hundred years have wrestled with the problem of what constitutes insanity, or, to phrase it more accurately, what type of mental condition should preclude responsibility for a criminal act.

Hospitalization Of The Voluntary Mental Patient, Hugh A. Ross

Michigan Law Review

In 1949, the last year for which accurate statistics are available, 390,567 persons were admitted to mental hospitals in the United States. Total annual cost of mental illness, including loss of earnings, has been estimated to be over a billion dollars a year. Although the problems involved in admission of the mentally ill patient to a hospital are usually thought of in terms of formal involuntary commitment proceedings, there is an increasing awareness of the desirability of provision for voluntary procedures which would encourage prompt and effective medical care. Voluntary admission is not a form of commitment, although it may …

Torts - Liability Of Physician Erroneously Certifying Insanity, Richard Z. Rosenfeld

Michigan Law Review

A physician certified plaintiff to be insane, when in fact she was sane; she was thereafter committed to a state sanitarium. Upon her release, she sued the physician for negligence in examination. Defendant's demurrer for failure to state a cause of action was sustained. On appeal, held, affirmed. Quoting almost the entirety of an analogous 1900 decision from the same jurisdiction, the court held that defendant had owed no duty to plaintiff. Because the administration of the law "should not be obstructed by the fears of physicians that they may render themselves liable to suit," certifying physicians "should be …

Guttmacher & Weihofen: Psychiatry And The Law., Morris Ploscowe

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Psychiatry and the Law. By Manfred. S. Guttmacher and Henry Weihofen.

Public Policies Underlying The Law Of Mental Incompetency, Milton D. Green

Michigan Law Review

Mental incompetency, or legal insanity, has usually been studied in the patchquilt fashion. It appears as a sub-heading of incidental interest in such widely diversified subjects as crimes, contracts, domestic relations, torts and wills. It can, however, be conceived of as a single strand in the seamless web. So viewed, it may appear to wind in and out of the various artificial subdivisions of the law, cutting across each at one particular place or another. And so conceived, it can be studied according to the second and less orthodox method of analysis. Few are the isolated areas in the law …

Constitutional Law - Psychopathic Proceeding - Due Process And Jury Trial, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Proceedings were brought against appellant under a Minnesota statute providing for commitment of psychopathic persons who showed habitual sexual misconduct. Appellant appealed to the state supreme court for a writ of prohibition, claiming denial of due process. Appellant's contentions were overruled and he appealed to the United States Supreme Court. Held, the statute did not deny due process. Minnesota ex rel. Pearson v. Probate Court, (U.S. 1940) 60 S. Ct. 523.

Torts -Temporary Insanity As A Defense

Michigan Law Review

While operating a bus owned by the corporate defendant the individual defendant suddenly became insane and lost control of the bus which struck a parked ice truck owned by the plaintiff McKay, and upon which the plaintiff Sforza was chopping ice. These actions were brought to recover for property damage and personal injuries thereby incurred. Held, in spite of the temporary insanity the individual defendant was legally responsible for the negligence, which is imputable also to the corporate defendant. Sforza v. Green Bus Lines, Inc., et al; McKay v. Same, (Munic. Ct. City of New York, 1934) 268 …

Gifts Causa Mortis - Contemplation Of Suicide

Michigan Law Review

The testator, suffering from melancholia and contemplating suicide, purchased a certificate of stock in the name of his brother and caused it to be deposited in a bank by the latter. Over two months thereafter, the testator stated, in effect, that in the event of his death the certificate should become the brother's property. Held, in affirming the allowance of the final account of the executor, that the transfer of the certificate was a valid gift causa mortis. In re Van Wormer's Estate, 255 Mich. 399, 238 N.W. 210 (1931).

Irresistible Impulse And Criminal Liability, John Barker Waite

Michigan Law Review

Do you believe in free-will, or mechanistic determinism, or fore-ordination, or fatalism? What do you mean by 'irresistible impulse'? What is the purpose of this prosecution against which you advocate, or deny, irresistible impulse as a defense; and just what do you mean by 'defense'? If, instead of one question, "is irresistible impulse a defense", we should ask these other questions of counsel, judge and medical expert, how often would their answers be in accord? Yet the one question can never be intelligently discussed in the absence of certainty and agreement as to the other premises. There are certain combinations …

Liability In Tort Of Infants And Insane Persons, Francis H. Bohlen

Michigan Law Review

It is universally held that mere infancy or insanity does not preclude liability for the impairment of another's bodily condition or the physical condition of another's property caused by conduct which, if that of an adult or mentally normal person, would be a wrong of aggression or negligence.

But there is a conflict of authority and a wide divergence of opinion among text writers as to the liability of persons who, because of extreme youth or mental deficiency, are incapable of forming a culpable intention, or whose incapacity to realize the probable consequences of their conduct makes it unjust to …

Emotional Disturbance As Legal Damage, Herbert F. Goodrich

Michigan Law Review

Mental pain or anxiety the law cannot value, and does not pretend to redress, when the unlawful act complained of causes that alone." Lord Wensleydale's famous dictum in Lynch v. Knight1 will serve as a starting point for this discussion. His lordship's notion of mental pain is evidently that of a "state of mind" or feeling, hidden in the inner consciousness of the individual; an intangible, evanescent something too elusive for the hardheaded workaday common law to handle. Likewise, in that very interesting problem regarding recovery for damages sustained through fright, it is always assumed, tacitly or expressly, that mere …

Emotional Disturbance As Legal Damage, Herbert F. Goodrich

Articles

MENTAL pain or anxiety the law cannot value, and does not pretend to redress, when the unlawful act complained of causes that alone. Lord Wensleydale's famous dictum in Lynch v. Knight will serve as a starting point for this discussion. His lordship's notion of mental pain is evidently that of a "state of mind" or feeling, hidden in the inner consciousness of the individual; an intangible, evanescent something too elusive for the hardheaded workaday common law to handle. Likewise, in that very interesting problem regarding recovery for damages sustained through fright, it is always assumed, tacitly or expressly, that mere …

Administering Justice The Medical Prepossession, Clarence A. Lightner

Michigan Law Review

This quotation is from a recent document coming from con- servative and intelligent sources, recommending as a cure for economic and commercial unrest, and other evils, the creation of a League of National Guilds.

Confinement Of The Insane, Thomas M. Cooley

Articles

The time is almost within the memory of living persons when it was deemed not only lawful but proper to confine persons afflicted with mental disease in dungeons and with chains, and to subject them to beating, at the discretion of their keepers, in order to subdue their senseless fury and drive away their delusions.1 The notions of an ignorant and barbarous age justified such treatment, but the common law on the subject has been so much modified in the greater intelligence of the present century that opinions as to how much of the old rules remain must be expressed …